Chinese mothers & Aussie women

I have posted before on the relative success that Asian kids have in Western education systems. Amy Chua has written a strident defense of the role of Chinese mothers in using discipline to bring out the best in their children. I am sympathetic. Westerners do undervalue the abilities of their kids and apologize for childish laziness rather than seeking to motivate intelligence. For example, many kids don’t naturally take to learning music but, with some acquired skills, they start to enjoy it and do well. Kids hate reading if they cannot read and so on. Most pleasure in life initially involves some investment in acquiring skills.

I also notice the better dress sense and appearance of Asian/Chinese women particularly relative to their Australian counterparts – this is a peculiarly Australian rather than a general Western trait. Among Westerners, European women dress better and with more style while American women are well groomed with attractive hair styles.

Asian/Chinese women typically take care of their appearance than Australian women. They invest a higher fraction of their incomes in their appearance. They wear make-up, wash and style their hair and don’t wear deodorants that smell like insect spray. Many Western women are lazy in caring for their appearance. Their tossed salad, greasy, unwashed hairstyles are nondescript. Their amorphous, sagging, braless boobs – often under a cheap t-shirt are – coupled with the standard crinkled, faded jeans that bunch at the knees. Footwear are clunky runners not shoes. The overall impression to outsiders must be that our convict heritage lives on. Indeed, some have suggested Aussies dress like slobs to hide any sense of social class.

You notice the distinctive Aussie lack of interest in personal appearance when flying back to Australia on a mixed flight of Aussies and foreign tourists. The foreigners generally look smart and their kids are tidy and well-behaved. The Aussie men wear shorts and thongs, haven’t shaved while the women look almost dirty with uncombed hair, cheap fake designer t-shirts with a somewhat insecure ‘what-are-you?’ scowl plastered on their face.

Many are criticizing Amy Chua’s strong views. I would turn the question around and ask why do Western women undervalue their children and why do Australian women (and many men) undervalue themselves by investing so little in their appearances?

6 comments to Chinese mothers & Aussie women

hrgh. What I notice most about many of the Australian women is their hair. It isn’t even combed let alone washed and styled. Its often swept up in a kind of unkempt ‘tossed salad’ look that I guess is intended to make some kind of statement. Simply combing it back after washing it would be a marked improvement. The men are often either balding or just have their hair cut short. It doesn’t look so conspicuously dirty and unkempt because there isn’t enough of it to show.

The deodorant issue is a disaster. Women have a natural sweat that when combined with cheap deodorants and a lack of bathing has a fly spray intensity in odour. A bath and no deodorant at all would be an improvement.

There’s an opportunity cost involved in wasting money on your appearance when you can invest that same money in, for example, shares, real estate etc.

Also, using less ‘product’ for hair, deodorant or in make-up is very good for the environment, by way of our treatment works for starters, and truly shows one is looking-after and taking pride in oneself.